Kyra Gardner, filmmaker, and daughter of FX Master Tony Gardner, recently shared some BTS footage of her father working on 1991’s The Addams Family. The video kicks off with a long-haired Tony welcoming us to the family and gives a peek into the shop where we witness the elongated appendages of the aptly named Long Arm Addams in full swing. We also get a glimpse of the final version of the Long Arm Addams character on set, created as one of many characters featured in the party scene that included the snake saxophone, a twelve-fingered clarinet player, a one-armed string bass player in the orchestra, Cousin Itt, the Siamese Twins and a bunch of other interesting Addams folks at the party. There’s also a bit of David Miller, who was hired separately from Alterian to bring everyone’s favorite cognizant hand, (yes, we are of course talking about Thing) to life.
Tony Gardner was nice enough to send us a bit of backstory on what we’re looking at here.
“The Addams Family was one of Alterian’s ‘dream jobs.’ We loved the director and producers, the cast, the crew, and everyone we had the pleasure of working on to create all of these crazy Addams characters. There was a great group dynamic between everyone working on the show …I think we were all fans. What was really fun was that we were also asked to provide some fun props as well, like the mechanical Addams Family house clock, and the finger trap that Morticia offers up for auction.”
“A favorite for all of us was figuring out the rigging and prosthetics for Pugsley and Wednesday’s swordfight for their elementary school performance. We approached it a little too aggressively at first, and our first few tests sprayed the ceiling of Alterian’s warehouse. What you saw on camera was the more ‘subdued’ version of over-the-top, with a literal shower head built into Pugsley’s shoulder stump for his blood spray.”
In the spirit of Wednesday coming out on Netflix and @TaraAnsley sharing some wonderful photos of my dad working on The Addams Family (1991), I put together a little video of found bts footage @alterianinc @TonyatAlterian #wednesday #AddamsFamily pic.twitter.com/vNb36PQZfT
— Kyra Klown From Outer Space (@kyramyra3) December 4, 2022
With this year’s wild success of Netflix’s Wednesday, we’ve all got Addams on the brain. But hey, that’s nothing new! Take a look at some Addams love from Fangos past. Our January 1992 issue, (FANGORIA #109) featured some of the ooky adults of the fam front and center.
That same month, we also had FANGORIA’s Horror Spectacular #5 featuring the deLIGHTful Uncle Fester as the cover ghoul. Take a look below at the Spectacular cover and some photos from the shop, featuring lots of Things, Cousin Itt getting a blowout, a scale model of the iconic house, and more.
Tony Gardner reflects on watching David Miller and Chris Hart bring Thing to life. “David Miller was responsible for creating all of the Thing prosthetics and props, and a magician named Chris Hart performed Thing. A favorite memory there was watching Chris get pushed down a hallway lying down in a shopping cart with the front and back cut out so that he could puppeteer Thing running down the hall. VFX Supervisor Chuck Komisky directed a lot of those scenes, which was a lot of fun to watch.” Scroll down for a look at some vault goodies.
You can read full versions of FANGORIA for FREE in our archives. We aren’t quite up to January 1992 just yet, but at the time of this writing, you can read issue #1 in its entirety, and all the way into 1990. That’s a decade of Fango at your fingertips! So… get to flippin.
